The Labyrinth-Ateez x reader

Memories

As she screamed, dropping backward down the shaft, Y/N realized that her fall was being slightly impeded by things brushing against her. Large, thick leaves they might be, or some sort of tough fungus sprouting from the walls of the pit. Whatever they were, she tried to grab hold of one, to save herself from the terrible smash she expected every instant. She was falling too fast. Then, by blind chance, her wrist landed smack in one of the things, which at once closed firmly. With a jolt that almost disjointed her, she found herself dangling by one arm. "Oh!" she gasped in relief, and felt herself heaving for breath. She looked down the shaft, to see how close she had been to breaking every bone. All she could see was black, lined with the things that had broken her fall. She looked up. The doorway through which she had entered the shaft was very high above her. As her eyes adjusted to the gloomy light, she saw what it was that had caught hold of her: a hand. All around her, protruding from the sides of the shaft, hands were groping in the air, like reeds underwater. Her relief gave way to a sick feeling: she was in the grip of a hand with no arm or body attached to it, and she had no apparent means of ever releasing herself. Perhaps they were carnivorous hands, or like Venus flytraps that simply dissolved you away over a long period of time. She looked nervously up and down the shaft again, this time to see if there were any skeletons dangling there, as in a jungle trap. She saw none. And now she felt other hands reaching for her and finding her, taking hold of her by the legs and the body. There were hands on her thighs, her waist, her neck. She shuddered, and shouted, "Stop that!" Knowing it was futile, she called, "Help! Help!" She writhed, trying to shake them all off, and with her free hand reached out for a hold, in a despairing attempt to climb away. All she could see to grasp hold of was yet another hand. Hesitantly she put hers in it, and it responded immediately, grasping her hand firmly. With the idea of perhaps climbing up the hands as though on a ladder, she tried to free her wrist from the first hand. It was no good. Now she was more tightly held than ever, stuck in a web of hands. "Help!" she whimpered. She felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned her head to see what it was. To her bewilderment, she saw that hands to one side of her contrived to form themselves into a face of sorts, with finger-and-thumb circles for eyes and two hands working together to fashion a mouth. And the mouth spoke to her. "What do you mean, 'Help'?" it said. "We are helping. We're Helping Hands." "You're hurting," Y/N told them. It was not quite true. Fear, rather than pain, was what afflicted her. Now there were several more faces of hands around her. "Would you like us to let go?" one of them asked. Y/N glanced down the shaft. "Uh ... no." "Well, then," one of the mouths said. "Come on. Which way?" "Which way?" she asked, nonplussed. "Up or down?" "Oh ..." She was more confused. "Er ..." She looked back up the shaft toward the light, but that would be a kind of retreat. She looked down, into the unknown, a black abyss. "Come on! Come on!" an impatient voice urged her. "We haven't got all day." Haven't you? Y/N thought to herself. "It's a big decision for her," said a sympathetic voice. "Which way do you want to go?" asked an insistent one. Everyone in the Labyrinth was so peremptory. I've got good reason to be in a hurry Y/N felt. I've only got thirteen hours to find my baby brother, and heaven knows how much time has already gone by. But why are all these people - if you can call them people - so bossy? "Come on! Come on!" "Well, er ..." Y/N still hesitated. Up was chicken, and down was dreadful. Many faces were watching her indecisiveness. Several of them were snickering, covering their mouths with another hand. She took a deep breath. "Well, since that's the way I'm pointed ... I'll go down." "She chose down?" She heard the snickers behind their hands. "She chose - down!" "Was that wrong?" Y/N inquired timidly. "Too late now," said one of the hand faces, and with that they started to hand her down the shaft, not roughly. She heard them singing something like a shanty. "Down, down, down, down, Down, hand her down, boys. We'll all go to town, boys. Down, down, down, down, Down, hand her down, boys, Never a frown, boys, Down, down, down, down." And down she went, far down, until she found herself held momentarily above a manhole, while Helping Hands removed the cover of it. Then the lowest hands let go of her, dropping her neatly down the hole, and the last she saw of the hands was their waving goodbye helpfully. As she landed on the stone floor of a dark, small cell, the cover was replaced, with a clunk. In pitch darkness, Y/N sat down. Her face was blank